1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of telecommunications. More particularly, the present invention relates to management systems or tools for monitoring customer or subscriber generated trouble reports in a telecommunications services environment.
2. Acronyms
The written description provided herein contains acronyms which refer to various telecommunications services, components and techniques, as well as features relating to the present invention. Although some of these acronyms are known, use of these acronyms is not strictly standardized in the art. For purposes of the written description herein, acronyms will be defined as follows:
Advanced Interactive executive (AIX)
Electronic Bonding (EB)
Local Area Network (LAN)
Manager Scratch Pad (MSP)
Online Query System (OQS)
Operational Support System (OSS)
Private Branch Exchange (PBX)
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
Work and Force Administration (WFA)
Work and Force Administration-Control (WFA/C)
The present invention, through one or more of its various aspects and/or embodiments is presented to accomplish one or more objectives and advantages, such as those noted below.
A general object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method for monitoring customer or subscriber generated trouble reports or tickets within a telecommunications services environment.
Further, an object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method that ensures awareness of trouble conditions or outages, and that offers escalated service restoration on a proactive basis.
Another object of the invention is to reduce the presence of long duration (or old) trouble reports, and to improve the service provided to customers, such as Interexchange Carrier customers and other special service (e.g., private line) customers.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for monitoring customer generated trouble reports and generating notification to alert key personnel or management that outages (i.e. troubles) exist that have exceeded predefined time limits or intervals.
Still another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for monitoring customer or subscriber generated trouble reports that includes a flexible, table driven architecture which provides the ability to automatically escalate to all levels of management at predetermined intervals.
Another object of the invention is to satisfy customer requirements for timely, proactive and documented internal escalations, and to permit escalation intervals, pager numbers, notification messages, and other parameters to be customized through a user-maintained configuration table.
Accordingly, the present invention throughout its features and aspects is designed to monitor the progress of customer generated trouble reports or tickets during the life of those reports in a telecommunications or special services environment. In accordance with an aspect of the invention, an apparatus and method are provided for monitoring customer generated trouble tickets and for notifying appropriate management levels or personnel when predefined thresholds of time are exceeded. The predefined thresholds may be controlled at a special service center level. The notification that is generated may comprise an alphanumeric or digital page, an e-mail message, an X-Window terminal message and/or other types of electronic messages containing various information, including the ticket number, escalation level, date and time received, service type, customer name, current status and the initials of the technician involved in the service restoration effort. In addition to paging notifications, printed escalation reports may be generated and provided to management or service personnel.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a Work and Force Administration-Control (WFA/C) Operational Support System (OSS) may be utilized to monitor the workload and individual trouble ticket history. Pager notifications may be noted in a trouble ticket log of the WFA/C for audit trial purposes. The present invention may also be designed to automatically transmit the proactive alert message across an electronic bonding (EB) gateway to notify EB customers (i.e., customers that share or receive electronic ticketing or report information) that proactive escalation has occurred. Further, escalation intervals, paging numbers, notification messages, and other parameters may be customized through user-maintained configuration tables.
According to an aspect of the present invention, an alerting system is provided. The alerting system proactively ensures awareness of data satisfying predetermined alerting criteria. The alerting system includes a manager module and an alerting module. The manager module periodically monitors the data to determine whether the data satisfies the predetermined alerting criteria. The alerting module sends an alert to a recipient when the manager module determines the data satisfies the predetermined alerting criteria.
According to a preferred embodiment, the alerting system also includes a parsing module which parses the data to remove extraneous and invalid information. The parsing module also organizes the data into data records according to a predefined format. The parsing module then transmits to the manager module at a predefined interval, the data records organized according to the predefined format, for monitoring by the manager module.
According to a preferred embodiment, the data includes pending customer generated trouble tickets. Moreover, the predetermined alerting criteria is at least one time interval. Furthermore, each pending customer generated trouble ticket satisfies the alerting criteria when the trouble represented by the pending customer generated trouble ticket has not been resolved within a time period defined by the time interval. The alerting system may also include a report generator which generates a report logging each alert sent by the alerting module along with corresponding alert information. The alert information includes the alert recipient, a trouble ticket number corresponding to the pending customer generated trouble ticket causing the alert, and the time the alert was sent.
According to a preferred embodiment, the alerting module also includes an error manager module and a notification system which alerts the recipient. The error manager module informs the notification system of the alert recipient and the corresponding alert information, and transmits information to the report generator. The predetermined alerting criteria may include at least one time interval. Each time interval corresponds to an escalation level. Moreover, a user may define at least one recipient for each escalation level.
The alerting system also includes configuration files, such as a center alert file and a center data file. The center alert file stores alert information particular to a service center. The alert information includes alert recipient information for each escalation level. The center data file stores ticket information particular to the service center. The ticket information specifies the alerting criteria for each escalation level. In a preferred embodiment, the manager module discerns a service center associated with the data and determines if the data satisfies the alerting criteria corresponding to the customer service center. The determination is made by reading the data and querying the center data file corresponding to the service center identified in the data to determine whether the data should be monitored. If the data should be monitored, the manager module determines the alerting criteria from the center data file. If the data satisfies the alerting criteria, then the center data file queries the center alert file to determine the alert recipient. Moreover, a user may input updated alert information and updated ticket information into the configuration files at any desired time. Accordingly, the updated alert information and updated ticket information becomes effective when the manager module process the next trouble ticket.
The predefined interval is the time required for organizing the data into one complete data record. Sending an alert to the recipient can be via either emailing, paging, or transmitting messages across an electronic bonding gateway.
The data may include pending customer generated trouble tickets. Moreover, the parsing module determines whether each pending customer generated trouble ticket is related to a preceding pending customer generated trouble ticket. If a relationship is determined, the parsing module does not generate a data record for the subsequent pending customer generated trouble ticket.
The alerting system may also include a system alert file which stores information relating to a system administrator who will receive an alert if a system error occurs. The system error can be either the manager module receiving no data for one hour, the parser discerning an invalid specific service center, the manager module receiving an invalid entry from the center alert file or the manager module receiving an invalid entry from the center data file.
An alerting system is also provided for proactively ensuring awareness of pending customer generated trouble tickets which have not been resolved for at least a predetermined time corresponding to an escalation level. The time is selected by a customer service center. The alerting system includes a manager module and an alerting module. The manager module periodically monitors the pending customer generated trouble tickets to determine whether each pending customer generated trouble ticket remains unresolved for the time corresponding to the escalation level. The alerting module sends an alert to a recipient assigned to the escalation level when the manager module determines the pending customer generated trouble ticket remains unresolved for the time corresponding to the escalation level. The alerting system may also include a report generator which generates a report logging each alert sent by the alerting module. The alerting module includes an error manager module and a notification system which sends the alert to the recipient. The error manager module informs the notification system of the alert recipient along with corresponding information. The error manager module also transmits report information to the report generator.
The alerting system may also include configuration files including a center alert file and a center data file. The center alert file stores alert information particular to a service center. The alert information includes the alert recipient for the escalation level. The center data file stores ticket information particular to the service center. The ticket information specifies which pending customer generated trouble ticket the manager module monitors and the alert criteria corresponding to the escalation level. Preferably, the manager module discerns a service center associated with the pending customer generated trouble ticket and determines if the pending customer generated trouble ticket has achieved the escalation level defined by the customer service center. The determination is made by reading the pending customer generated trouble ticket and querying the center data file corresponding to the service center identified in the pending customer generated trouble ticket to determine whether the pending customer generated trouble ticket should be monitored. If the pending customer generated trouble ticket should be monitored, the manager module determines the predetermined time corresponding to the escalation level from the center data file. If the pending customer generated trouble ticket remains unresolved for the predetermined time, then the center data file queries the center alert file to determine the alert recipient.
The alerting system may also include a trouble ticket generating system which receives trouble ticket information from a plurality of sources and periodically transmits aggregated trouble ticket information to the manager module for monitoring. The alerting system may also include a parsing module. The parsing module parses the pending customer generated trouble tickets to remove extraneous and invalid information. The parsing module further organizes the pending customer generated trouble tickets into data records according to a predefined format. The parsing module also transmits to the manager module at a predefined interval, the data records organized according to the predefined format, for monitoring by the manager module. The parsing module determines whether each pending customer generated trouble ticket is related to a preceding pending customer generated trouble ticket. If a relationship is determined, the parsing module generates only one data record for all related pending customer generated trouble tickets. A system alert file may also be provided, which stores information relating to a system administrator who will receive an alert when a system error occurs.
According to another aspect of the present invention, an alerting method is provided. The alerting method proactively ensures awareness of pending customer generated trouble tickets remaining unresolved for at least a predetermined time corresponding to an escalation level. The alerting method includes monitoring each pending customer generated trouble ticket. The method also includes determining whether the monitored pending customer generated trouble ticket has been unresolved for at least the predetermined time corresponding to the escalation level. When the pending customer generated trouble ticket is determined to be unresolved for a duration longer than the predetermined time, an alert is sent to a recipient assigned to the escalation level.
The above-listed and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more fully set forth hereinafter.